In her history of the 1975 New York City debt crisis, the historian Kim Phillips-Fein describes the municipal budget as an object that “comes to life as the place where opposing views of the city’s future were contested, fought out, and finally decided.” This statement is no less true when it comes to public school district budgets, especially ones the size of Los Angeles Unified. We are currently in the midst of “budget season.” That is, per the education code, LAUSD is required to adopt and submit a budget to the county for approval by July 1. Given that the District is going to be presenting a draft budget for the 2025-26 school year on June 17th, we feel that it is important to clarify what exactly a budget is, and how LAUSD budgets have shaped up historically.

More than any other school district in the state, Los Angeles Unified has been growing its accumulated general fund balance (aka “reserve”) for the last ten years, reaching a record …

Last week, the Los Angeles Unified School District kicked off a week of budget negotiations by introducing a “fiscal stabilization plan” for a variety of vague-sounding budget cuts the district would commit to making over the next three years. The problem at hand, according to the district, was that by the end of the 2027-28 school year LAUSD would be forced to spend $1.5 billion with money it would not have.   What the district failed to mention in that opening discussion, however, was that $1.1 billion of that $1.5 billion was the result of completely optional (and unprecedented in size) contribution into the “Retiree Health Benefits Fund”—an irrevocable trust where the district can park money, invest it, and possibly one day pay for retiree health benefits (often referred to as “other post-employment benefits” or OPEB). At present, LAUSD pays the entirety of its retiree health benefits on a pay-as-you-go basis from the general fund, not the trust.  Any contributions into the trust are an entirely separate expense from the actual cost of the benefits year to year.